Civil rights plaque installed at Hampton attorney's offices

A plaque on the building that was the F.W. Woolworth Co. store in Hampton… (David Macaulay, Daily Press )

February 27, 2011|By Joe Lawlor, jlawlor@dailypress.com | 247-7874

HAMPTON — — Attorney Robert Long has long known that the building where his law offices are located in downtown played a role in civil rights history as the site of a lunch counter sit-in.

So recently Long installed a plaque on the side of the building that commemorates how Hampton Institute students participated in a lunch counter sit-in at the former F.W. Woolworth building on Feb. 10, 1960, which is now Long's offices at 10 W. Queens Way.

Protests at segregated lunch counters were sweeping through the South at that time as part of the civil rights movement. In March, 1960, a protest in downtown Newport News and Hampton led to the integration of some lunch counters in Hampton Roads in the weeks and months that followed.

Long said the Hampton sit-in on Feb. 10 was the first in Virginia, and only nine days after the famous protest at the F.W. Woolworth in Greensboro, N.C.

Long said many of the historic buildings in downtown have since burned down. "It's a part of Virginia's history," he said. "This is one of the few historic buildings that remain." Long said he and his wife, Susan, renovated the building when they purchased it in 1984.